CAIRO: Israeli military strikes killed at least 45 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, most of them in the north of the enclave, Palestinian health officials said, as efforts to secure a halt in the more than year-long Israeli aggression resumed in Qatar.
The directors of the CIA and Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency would meet with Qatar’s prime minister on Sunday in Doha, an official briefed on the talks told Reuters.
The negotiations would seek a short-term ceasefire and the release of some hostages being held by Hamas in exchange for Israel’s release of Palestinian prisoners, the official said.
The talks aim to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a halt in fighting for less than a month in the hope it would lead to a more permanent ceasefire.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas but a Palestinian official close to the mediation effort told Reuters: “I expect Hamas would listen to the new offers, but it remains determined that any agreement must end the aggression and get Israeli forces out of Gaza.”
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The United States, Qatar and Egypt have been leading negotiations to bring an end to Israel’s intense aggression since after Hamas stormed into southern Israel on October 7 last year, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, by Israeli tallies.
The death toll from Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza is approaching 43,000, Gaza health officials say, with the densely populated enclave in ruins.
It was not clear if Egyptian officials were also joining the talks on Sunday.
At least 43 of those killed on Sunday were in northern Gaza, where Israeli troops have returned to “root out Hamas” who it claims have regrouped there.
Twenty people were killed following an airstrike on houses in Jabalia, the largest of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, which has been the focus of an Israeli aggression for more than three weeks, medics and the Palestinian official news agency WAFA said.
An Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinian families in Shati camp in Gaza City, killed nine people and wounded 20 others, with many in critical condition, medics said.
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Footage circulated on Palestinian media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed people rushing to the bomb site to help evacuate the casualties. Bodies were scattered on the ground, while some carried wounded children in their arms before loading them in a vehicle.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the report on the strike on the school.
Three local journalists were among those killed at the school in Shati - Saed Radwan, head of digital media at Hamas Al-Aqsa television, Hanin Baroud, and Hamza Abu Selmeya, according to Hamas media.
Gaza’s government media office described their deaths as an “assassination.” This raised the number of Palestinian journalists killed by Israeli fire since October 7, 2023 to 180, it added.
On Sunday, Israel’s military claimed it had killed more than Hamas 40 fighters in the Jabalia area in the past 24 hours, as well as dismantling infrastructure and locating large quantities of military equipment.
In addition, Israel claimed its forces had eliminated a Hamas cell in a clash in central Gaza.
Rising death toll
Meanwhile, the death toll from an Israeli airstrike late on Saturday on a residential district in the nearby town of Beit Lahiya rose to 40, WAFA said.
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The Israeli military said it had carried out “a precise strike using precise munitions” on Hamas fighters in a building in Beit Lahiya, hitting a number of them.
It said the high number of casualties mentioned in the WAFA report did not align with the type of munitions used in the precision attack.
Israeli military strikes on the towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza have so far killed around 800 people during a three-week offensive, the Gaza health ministry said.
Palestinian health officials said the ongoing Israeli aerial and ground offensive has wrecked the healthcare system in northern Gaza and was blocking medical teams from reaching bombed sites.
The Civil Emergency Service said two days ago that their operations were halted after Israel detained and wounded several of their personnel and bombed their only fire truck.